


Divided

by kikibug13



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/pseuds/kikibug13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baran was born in a place where ownership of land never existed, not as long as his people lived there. But a couple of generations ago, a new power was discovered - one which made magic possible with the build-up of potential that those sensitive to it can acquire when crossing boundaries. Will he be able to protect the peaceful existence that he has known against ambitious people trying to create boundaries and sic neighbor against neighbor in their hunt for power?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Divided

**Author's Note:**

> For the challenge [Witches Big Bang](http://witchesbigbang.dreamwidth.org). 
> 
> Not betaed currently, but as revisions come in, proper credit - and changes - will be included. 
> 
> Art [here](http://kymericl.livejournal.com/26609.html). Thank you!

Once, a very long time ago, when I was just a little girl, things were very different. They were very similar, because the land was much as it is now, and the people are as they are now, and everything was going well and smoothly as it is now.

But there was one difference.

There weren't people such as me now, and such as every one of you gathered here today.

Not that any of us knew to miss it, mind. We all got along pretty well, and there was work for everyone, and we did things as well as we could.

We share this land we all came to many, many years ago, before anyone living remembers, and the longest that anyone living remembers is me, so I know that very well. It was before the five-times mother of my mother's mother was alive, and that was longer than any of you here is likely to be around, yes, that means even you, my young friend, because not even I have lived the span of eight lives, close as I might be coming six.

Any which way, we came with ships running away from a great shaking and stirring of the land and sea, and they were sailing for a very long time before the shore settled enough so they could land. 'tis how the mountain to the East rose as high as it is, and we do not know how to find the land that they sailed from any longer, and others who may have sailed or otherwise survived know not how to find us, because our ancestors didn't know where they would be sailing to. It all changed.

They changed, too.

They never asked about all the stories of how things were before they sailed, and with time, some of them stories were lost, because people forget the stories that don't get told, even when some of them are written down. Writings get lost, people who knew the stories pass away, and knowledge gets washed away by time.

I think that our mothers and fathers did not like to remember what it was, before they sailed. They'd found true friends during that sailing, a journey of many many months, probably years, of many ships but not so many that they didn't know each other by name and the names of all their children and parents and lost loved ones by the time they reached these shores.

New Land, they called it, because it was a true name and one which meant a new hope to them all, rather than picking a name which would cause conflict or strife.

It was a rich land that they came to, and it still is, you all know that. Despite the cataclysm, it was sheltered by the mountain which rose and stayed alive and fertile and green and lovely. When they came ashore, spring was breaking and the trees were covered in gentle colors of pink and cream and white and pale gold, and the fields were covered in fresh green, and those who landed wandered for days with nothing much getting done, they were so overjoyed to be ashore again, to have such good place to be.

They didn't want to mar the land they fell in love with. They didn't want to bleed it through and burn it, so in the end, they thought of how we live now. Nobody owns the land, we only care for it. Yes, even we who now can do more than they dreamed, back then, and those who never touch a hoe or sow, we all but care for it as it cares for us.

Love the land and love each other, that is how we are and that is how we have been.

It may be difficult for you all to imagine how things were before the Art was here. But really, for many people life was as they know it now, too. They tend the land, or they have their crafts; they live with their families and friends or they live alone, and they have things to do and things not to do, and times to do them.

All that needed done was done by the labor of people's own hands and backs, and when crops or livestock or people got unwell, there were herbs and practices to try and mend them, but their success, as it is today, was limited. But that was all that was known, and that was what they lived with.

It is not a bad life that they knew. It will never be a bad life, in this place and with the people we have grown from.

We who are here tonight listen to the land one way; but all who do their work from the heart listen to that work, be it the land or wood or iron or stone or livestock. So have things been done for a long time, together and each of us fairly, and the addition of Art to aid things only eases, but does not supplant what toiling hands can achieve.

And toiling hearts. We all have but each other, and happiness for each other and ourselves is what best we can find.

And then there was one day, and most of you who have come here have known such a day, or evening, or night. Or maybe it was early morning, just when the light and dark met an one ran away, and you possibly remember it as clearly as I do mine, although I am telling about my own day, and it was gray and foggy and not interesting at all. The mud was sticking to my shoes as I went about the road on my work for the day with a wet slicking sound.

There was a bridge on the road. It went over a small dark stream. The stream was all swollen up and busy because of the rains, of course, but I paid no mind, the bridge went high above it, and I simply walked over it as I had the day before, and the one before that. Nothing had ever happened on that bridge, as far as I knew, other than getting built, I suppose.

It was when I was stepping across the pinnacle of the bridge that it happened. A slow shiver ran through me, except it was in no way a cold shiver - rather the opposite, pleasantly warming me up against the chilly gray of the fog. And I blinked my eyes, because something like that was too strange to happen to me, it never had before. And when I opened them the colors were a little more vivid, more clear. Just a little. The fog hadn't broken, there was no sun or any trace of it in the sky, but it was brighter all the same.

Now, here, most of you do know how that feels. How it looks. How it changes everything in the perception range, because we have been practicing with what it is and what it means and what it can do for a long while now, even you, my young friend taking copious notes. But at that time, that day, it was nothing that I had heard about, and I had no idea what to do about it. The little warm tangle in my growing-girl belly, and the way things _looked_ different.

I stood there on the bridge for a few more moments, then carefully started walking on. It didn't go away, this strange new brightness, but it didn't get in the way of doing anything, either.

Going back over the bridge that afternoon didn't make any difference - it neither happened again, nor did the passage back take it away. I didn't know what to do, and anybody I tried to talk with about it waved it again as the fancy of a girl. Everyone but my little sister, that is. She couldn't tell me anything about it, nor had anything like that happened to her, but she listened, she always listened. Her little rapt face would follow me around the room as I paced while I was telling her things. Oh yes, I used to move a lot, when I was younger. But years have weighted down all of that. And if you choose to use your gift to extend your life, each of you will know exactly how that works. Some of you who _don't_ go that way will, too, if you don't burn yourself out, as she did...

At _any_ rate.

This new thing, it wasn't going away, but it didn't seem to mean anything. After some days, I got used to the new brightness - it wasn't _very_ strong - and I nearly forgot. Sometimes some pieces of the brightness stayed when I closed my eyes as after-images, but I simply went on with the chores I had to do.

The next time, I was riding on the back of a cart, nestled comfortably in the hay, when the shudder came again, just as I was passing over the middle of a crossroads. I was afraid, when it happened again. You do know how when something strange happens once, even if it has lasting effects, we can dismiss it as though imagined. But when it happens again, and then once more, it is that much more difficult to ignore.

Gathering information about what and when happened was ever so slow. Sometimes, weeks would pass before it happened. Sometimes it was barely perceptible, and trust you me, I was looking for it.

But very, very slowly, the brightness grew more intense. It started outlining things, and people. And things I didn't really see before. I began to discern connections among people as visible. Sometimes, I could _see_ the outline of lost or hidden objects, despite the fact that they were behind solid stone or wood. The colors... ah, the colors. They were too beautiful for what they drew, and you know, or will know. I grew to be able to see the sickness inside a person, the way it gnawed at her insides and sucked away at her life, or the way his leg wasn't set right and it wouldn't mend right.

They didn't believe me for a while. None but my sister, and she was so very excited. When the rest began suspecting that I might not be imagining, they were frightened. Of course they were frightened, I was frightened, too. It was something nobody had ever known or heard of before, and people were sent out to ask other places, all over our corner of the world, and nobody had known anything like it, either.

And I wanted to travel. To cross more things, more streams and more crossroads and to places which may not be really new, but were going to be new to me. But I was so very little. So I got to roam the woods around the farm we were tending, and watch things change for me, and see things grow.

It was a little doe that I found with that I could do more than just _see_ things that were hidden. And the discovery frightened me. Because there was something wrong with her, inflammation of some sort making her limp, preventing her from running away as I approached. It was a sort of purple, dark and mean, spreading thin tendrils along her knee. She was a young animal, and could live a long time, I though. If only I could take that bruised color away.

It had been almost two years since the first time I had felt the brightness come to me. The intensity of all that I saw... most of you possibly haven't known how deep the collection of two years' worth of potential is, though some may have.

My fingers couldn't move into the skin of the doe, that much I knew. What I had not expected was that when my hand approached with the intent, cautious and uncertain, to remove the purple intrusion, it would push away from my palm. I moved fast; the doe cried out as the purple brightness moved through the glow of the rest of her body, and then it was out of the other side of her leg, and it dropped as though falling.

The world dimmed around me. Not as it had been before, but I had lost some of the acuity of my sight. Lost some of the potential, as we know now. The doe twitched, and then, realizing that the pain was gone, she shot off like an arrow through the forest. That was fine. I couldn't do more than sit back on the moss and last years' leaves and try to make sense of it.

I was shaken. I didn't know _what_ exactly I had done; it was like nothing I had heard of, ever, and I had asked so much of so many people, over the previous two years. None of what was happening to me had been known; but this was beyond anything considered possible. Healing - if what I had done _had_ been healing - was done with salves and ointments and care, and it certainly didn't happen in an instant. Ever.

Yet something had happened. The doe had run away, which she certainly hadn't been able to do earlier. _I_ had done it, too - there was nobody else around, and there was the difference in what I saw. In how I felt. I didn't feel tired, but things were definitely... taken away from me. Or rather, I had given them away, without knowing I would. There was also the feeling that I had done something.

You all know what had happened, here and now. But back then, I had nobody to tell me anything. I had to reason things out on my own, and it took me a while. A long while.

I sat on a mossy ground until chill chased me back home, and there tried to put my thoughts into telling it all to my family. My mother said I was too old to be keeping on with those fantasies by now, my father just shook his head. Once again, it was only my sister who believed, but she knew even less than I.

In fact, it seemed like I was the only one who could _find out_ , so I set out to do that. Every chance I got, I wandered alone, and I found out - it was the _crossing_ of things that made the brightness and the warmth come. Crossing between things that were _different_ on the two sides of what I was crossing. And once I had crossed between two things, it took a while before crossing it again - in either direction - made any difference. It could be a bridge or a crossroads, or the edge of the woods where fields lapped against the forest but then gave way. At nights like this, when people gathered around a fire and told stories, it could even be stepping outside the circle of light that the bonfire cast.

I could affect the things that I saw with the brightness, regardless of what the actual items were. Animal bodies or inanimate objects or people, if I could see it, I could affect it. And when I did, something was taken away from what was collecting when I crossed between places.

It took the most to see anything out of what I had ever seen when I looked at myself.

That I could affect it, though, did not mean that I could do what I _wanted_ , with what I saw. On occasion I didn't even _see_ everything that was different or wrong - the brighter my sight, the less of that problem - and sometimes what I had to do was more than the collection of difference-passages I had gathered.

My parents grew frightened, they insisted I needed either a husband or work, to get my mind away from my fancies. So I apprenticed with the local healer, learning about the herbs and their lore, the sicknesses and their signs and the means to help mending them - and that knowledge also helped me understand some of what I was seeing and even more of what I was doing. He was patient with me, and corrected me diligently until I _knew_ , as well as saw, and then listened to me, as time went on, when I had different ideas about what ailed people than he did.

It was a few months after I was apprenticed that Mario came.

He had traveled a long way, and he was small and scrawny and frightened; his family had not been kind too him when he started being different, and it had only been the hope brought by knowing about me that had pushed him onwards. I was not yet sixteen, but when I learned how he saw the brightened world, too - and _saw_ the peaceful green outlines of his motions, the likes of which I had only caught when looking at myself, oh, I knew. I knew that he was like me, and that the long wanderings had given him many borders to cross, and he had come to me able to do much.

But it was his little, hungry mind which helped us both. He asked questions and I was forced to find answers, as there was nobody else to answer him. Sometimes his ideas enlightened some of the answers I was seeking myself, too.

With time, more came. The healer asked me if he should seek another apprentice, and I thought about it for two days; but when my sister came to me, too, her eyes wide and green-tinged, I knew that I had to tell him he should. He nodded, his old dark eyes gently accepting my decision, and assured me that any time I had questions, I could come to him, or those like him. He warmed my heart in ways few things other than gentle shake of a crossing ever did.

I do not know why I was the first. I certainly wasn't the cleverest, or the fastest, or the most dedicated to learning about our talent and using it. I was probably the scariest, at least when I was insisting on what should happen for us, on what we had to do.

My students grew, and they got their own students, and we had our differences but we went on learning of what we could do, what we _should_ do, and how to do it. There were mistakes - more than one of us overextended himself or herself, draining the brightness not even until it was gone, but until their lives were lost with it. We learned how to stop that.

We learned how many ways we could go, and the things which frightened those who didn't see as we see, and the things which made them easier. We became the witches, those with power and knowledge, to call when other options failed. We tried to not fail those who did call, each in our ways, and with time, we learned to succeed, most of the time.

Remember, though. We are also people, and need care and attention and love and contact just as every other person. We are not infallible, the way other people aren't, either. We are the witches, and we see the light which the rest of the people do not know, but we are all brothers and sisters. One land, one people, which we work for in our special, peculiar way, the way everybody else does.

Never forget the beginnings, nor the endings which we will be going to if we take no care.

And remember, what we have is beautiful. It is lovely, so use it with love, out love, for love. Love of yourselves, and of your brothers and sisters. All of us.

Listen to the elders. We became what we are through learning, not age alone. And we elders, we listen to one another, too.

Because this is who we have. Each other.

~~~~

Baran smiled slightly to himself, closing his leather-bound notebook and watching the faces around him. This wasn't a gathering of all of them, nor was it limited to them alone, few of these meets were. But the Elder Greta was here, and as her only apprentice in a long while, he was here, too.

He could see the effects of the Elder's words, her story, told truly and truthfully, brightening eyes, steadying the soothing, familiar green glow around most of the figures here. His included, but he didn't look at himself much. He was too young to need any changes to keep himself going - he wouldn't need that for decades, if he chose to go that way. The way Elder Greta had, and he knew the part of her story which she didn't share with many circles.

Greta's sister, the girl their parents had also adopted, the girl whose mother had left with an expedition by ship only to be seen crashing and sinking with the rest of the crew as they had almost found their way back and whose father had died with grief for his wife. The girl who had chosen to give every spark and flicker of brightness she could get from wandering tirelessly through field and wood and glen, to others, to heal and help and soothe and ease, had burned too brightly. She had argued with Elder Greta, as they had started aging and the older sister had appeared to be half of the younger sister's age, then a third, and she had continued working things the way she'd known, while Greta was more sparing with what she had, but never failed to help her own self, either.

Greta had held her sister's head in her lap, stroking through the silver hair as the sister died, and she had scattered the dear name along with the ashes to the four winds. Elder Greta had been nothing but alone since then, and while she did mean every word about loving her brothers and sisters here and all over their land, and also when she had called _him_ her young friend, there was a hole in her heart that nothing had filled.

After so very many years, she had started to doubt if her choice had been the right one and not Greta's own. As time always did, she would say as he stirred the fire in the hearth of the little wooden house she had inhabited since before he had been born, and he had no reasons to doubt her, though he wanted to. It would make him less afraid.

People filed away from the gathering circle, some of them sparing a tired, sleepy smile for him, most nodding respectfully at his teacher, who had come around to sit beside him, wrinkled hands shaking a little.

"You remember her tonight, don't you."

She only nodded.

After a brief silence, she added, "Elie was missing from our circles tonight again. She hasn't come in a long time, to any of us, did you notice?"

Baran shook his head. "I am sorry, I don't think I ever saw her. She faded away from most of our company that I have heard of before I left my parents' farm, I believe."

"I wonder what happened," Elder Greta murmured, and Baran knew he didn't need to answer the question, "to make her avoid all of us."

~~~

It was a dark and stormy night, and the chill soaked through the gray stone walls into the room where Lina Eswood was writhing on the straw mattress, half screaming and half whimpering, sweat and tears and blood all seeming to turn cold despite the lit fireplace. Despite the warm water sponged along her by careful hands over her face and neck and arms and belly and legs.

The baby was hard in coming, and there was something wrong with him. Elie was tired, after the hours of labor, but she could see this well enough. Something wrong, but she was here, and when he was out where she could see him, where she could _see_ what it was, she would fix it.

She reached around to squeeze the and of the hostess of the home. "Very soon now, lady. And then you can rest while I take care of him, you can rest."

And Lina did just that. As soon as her infant son was placed across her breasts, she smiled, and dozed off, strong and deep.

What Elie couldn't bring herself to tell her was that the baby was dying. There was dark, bruising rot which was spreading through his veins, choking the life away from the young, fragile body. And it was too dim for her to be able to weave out of the baby.

Elie tried anyway. Because she owed it. Owed it to Lina, who had suffered so long to bring him into this world. Owed it to Carl who she could not-see pacing still along the hallway before the room, who had never left his wife alone during her labor, even if he could not be in here with her.

And she owed it to the innocent baby in her arms.

She settled, placing the baby beside his mother, and tried to concentrate. To extend her eyes and hands into the tiny body and to clear away the dim ... it couldn't be brightness, it couldn't be _called_ brightness, not when it was dim and fuzzy like that.

But, just like a cobweb, it was sticky, clinging both to her fingers and to the baby's body. It stretched between them like some sort of sleazy bridge...

And then snapped.

The child mewled helplessly, then stilled. Elie froze, in turn, but there was no more. No more light or brightness or dimness. No more heartbeat. No more breath. Try as she might, and she did try after the first wave of panic had at _all_ unclenched around her, nothing helped. Neither magical nor mundane means of resuscitation were to any avail. The baby was dead.

Lina was still sleeping, a small, tired, _beautifully smiling_ expression on her peaceful face. Elie hiccuped. Then slowly straightened, smoothing her skirts with bloody palms which she paid no heed to.

Carl was outside the door, just as she had known he would be, his face taught and tired and pale, dark circles around his eyes almost to rival his wife's.

"I'm... I'm sorry," Elie stammered. "They... she... he was born sick, mister Eswood. I tried to heal him, but I had not enough... I could not see what was wrong. Nor what to do. I'm sorry..."

Carl's blue eyes stared wide and broken and refusing to understand at her. Acknowledging her words would make them true, wouldn't they? His son was dead, and she sympathized how hard that was, but she couldn't undo it, she couldn't take that away. So she just looked back, her own mind repeating the information over and over again as though she could drill it into his and they could move on to acceptance, or at least a step closer to it.

"You... you couldn't..."

Elie shook her head. "I did not see what was ailing him clearly enough. If he'd had any time, I would have called for the other kind of healer, but he didn't. And I didn't do what was needed. I didn't _know_ what was needed. I'm sorry."

His gaze focused on her again, the weight of a boulder crashing down on her shoulders, squashing her into the ground. The he just brushed past her, the sweep of his arm pushing her against the door frame hard enough to knock her breath out as he stepped inside, kneeling behind the mattress.

Elie didn't dare move. He didn't stir, either. Moments stretched around the like the drops of morning dew, too fine to fall quickly, too many to stay on the leaves.

"Is she..."

"She is well. Only tired."

"And mother to a dead child." The edge of his voice sliced through what was left of her skin and a whining cry started in the pit of her stomach, resonating hollowly. "Get out," he grated.

Carl Eswood never looked back at her again. Not for a moment.

~~~

Mother looked up as Father stepped inside, kicking the snow off his boots so he wouldn't track it in and then taking it off.

"Good evening."

"So it is," she smiled, stepping to help him out of the parka and then kissing his cold-reddened face. "Did you go far today?"

"Not far," he smiled. "But we seem to have new neighbors."

"Yes?"

"They have taken up the big house up the slope, yes. Cleaning up the old road, too, although only that one. Keeping it well down on snow and ice and all."

"Well, that must be convenient, isn't it?"

They were bustling around the house, and little Ere watched from his usual spot by the fireplace. It was a usual evening, with both Mother and Father home, and talking, and all was well.

"Yes. They said the road would always be well cleared, but the forest around them, well, that may get a little wild."

Mother shrugged. "Whoever even goes up those steep slopes, anyway? Not like the big house on its ledge is easy to get to in any way _other_ than the road."

"It's not."

She looked up at him from her work by the table. "What is wrong?"

"I don't know. They are... there is something about them."

"Did you catch their names?"

"Eswood, I think. Lina and Carl."

Mother's hands stilled again, and she looked at Eri, then swallowed and turned to Father again. "Oh. I have heard about them."

"Yes?"

"A few years ago, before I moved here and we met, there were words. They... Lina was difficult to get with a child, and they waited a long time. But then she did get with child, and they were both very happy. Only the birth was hard, and the baby-- didn't survive. There was one of those gifted there, and even she couldn't help. Carl was very angry, and Lina was heartbroken. Then they... disappeared. They told nobody they would be going away, or where, one morning they simply weren't there."

"Well, they are here now." Father thought for a moment, frowning. "That would explain why they seem so..."

"So what?"

"Cold."

"Oh?"

"They are only interested in... things. Except for the gifted. They were asking questions, how many of them were around regularly, if they came by often. If anyone knew what determined if they were strong or weak. They were not questions to ask us who don't have the gift, you know."

"No, they weren't."

"And they talked about... land. How the land or the house one tends should belong to the people who tend it. Like, not possible to leave and other people to move into it, as things out to be, but _belong_."

"Isn't that how things used to be, before the great flood, and that we don't do?"

"It looks so to me."

"Mmph."

There was silence, and Eri didn't like what was on Mother's and Father's faces. Those faces were only supposed to happen when something was wrong, and Eri couldn't find out what would be wrong with just talking.

After a short silence, Father smiled. "So, what is cooking? I say it smells wonderful?"

Mother smiled back. "Well, there was this chicken who was limping a little, even in the coop, I thought it was the right time to make sure it was out of its misery, hmm?"

"Oh, I do love your chicken with rice."

And all was well again.

~~~

The circle meet had been weeks again. Greta had spent some of that time teaching Baran, and then she had been called away to a problem which was a woman's one, and so he had been sent to start walking on his own. He was a little young, and they both knew it, and many people wouldn't call him to do much if they could, but he needed to build up his store, and he needed to start learning. If he always stood in Greta's shadow, he wouldn't be able to do either.

For the last few days, he had stuck away from the houses, sleeping under the bigger trees. It was easier to do, here by the sea, even in this season. Up in the mountains it would be too cold to do; for little stretches of time, he enjoyed the time for himself. To find boundaries to cross, to seek out what he could see.

But tonight was too wet for that, the driving rain cold with the wind that pulled at Baran's cloak making him squint at the light in the windows of the small farmstead on his way. This... was something he had watched other witches do for all his life, if not very frequently; doing it himself, on his own, that was unexpectedly hard.

He swallowed, then ducked his chin against the gust of wind and rain and walked towards the door resolutely.

Baran had to knock twice, before the door opened slightly. "Who goes there?"

"My name is Baran Erinsson, and I am of the Gifted. I seek shelter." He spoke loud and clear, to be heard above the storm.

The woman hesitated briefly, looking him up and down through the crack she had opened the door at, before stepping back and letting him in. "You are a little young."

"Even we have to start sometime. Some start seeing the crossings older. Some... younger." He was taking off his cloak so it wouldn't drip inside the house, and his muddy shoes. "Thank you, kind lady."

"Name is Sela. It is just us two, so you may need to help yourself to some things."

"That, and I can give a hand with what needs doing," Baran smiled. "I grew up on a farm, I know my way around the work here."

"Good." Sela didn't quite smile back, but some of the hardness around her mouth softened. "Kitchen is this way."

"Thank you." He followed, then settled by the stove to warm up some, watching her and her place so he could figure out how to help.

Sela worked silently, a little sharply in the beginning, but as he stayed quiet, she seemed to almost forget that she had an audience, so she settled into her chores with a more accustomed rhythm to it, calming the stirring around the brightness Baran could see. The whole room, the whole house, radiated a stability, a rightness, and he smiled, squinting his eyes and looking around, and up. "You keep a good home."

She startled, almost enough to drop the pitcher she was filling, then her eyes narrowed at him.

Quickly, he raised his hands in front of him. "I'm not judging. I have not been on my own long, and I haven't seen this well - with the other ability, I mean - ever in my life before. This place looks _good_ , shows you don't skim around the edges of work that needs to be done or hide from what you undertake. We can see that, you know."

"I didn't." Sela's tone was curt, but not enough to be impolite. "I have not often... had to deal with gifted people." With a slight hesitation, she added, "recently."

Baran tilted his head to one side. "For a long time."

She shrugged, her graying braid bobbing over her shoulder. She focused on her work again. When she started wrapping the cloth to drain the curdled cheese, he smoothly stepped across the table from her to lend a hand. He got a surprised look, but then a nod; they worked in silence a little longer, but he'd had plenty of that for days.

"My mother somehow never got the hang of making cheese, you know. Hers always went wrong. It was always my father, and later my older brother, too, making the cheese, and we all helped. Do you have goats?"

"Cows. Two cows. My mother used to have goats. Maybe still does."

Now that was... food for thought. Baran babbled, telling small stories about the woods, avoiding mentioning his parents or brothers, as he though that she didn't like hers. So reminding her about family and past farmsteads might be unpleasant. Or maybe she missed them, but she didn't ask questions, and only occasionally made noises to react to what he was talking of.

But when he spoke about traveling, she sometimes asked about places. It seemed that she had gone to places far from this farm, far from the coast and deep into the forests which he was growing to love; and to different home groups. She asked after people who had sometimes passed, and sometimes moved; she asked after things which had passed a long time ago. Sometimes he could answer her, and sometimes he couldn't.

_She must have wandered far, before she came here,_ he realized. Possibly ran away from home - and much as he loved his family, he could relate to the impulse. She must have really not gotten along with her parents. So many things she was doing differently than the usual ways, and she frowned at him when he started to do them the accustomed ways.

Baran, though, could adjust easily. By the time they sat down for a meal, the conversation was, if not flowing, at least not completely one sided. She still didn't smile much, and it was still clear that she was used to being alone for the habit of many, many years. But she was kind, and good. And once her curiosity got the better of her, he could tell her about the gift, and what he knew of it, and it was a pleasant evening. She was different from everyone he knew, true.

But then, wasn't everyone different, and wasn't that one of the good things in the land?

 

Noor stepped inside the roadside shelter, shaking the water out of her cloak on the grubby wooden floor before taking the garment off to hang by the door.

"Chilled?"

She managed not to squeak in surprise at the voice from the other end of the shelter, but it was a near thing. She should have known he was there before she even entered the shelter, but after enforcing the dam upriver to make sure the fields weren't flooded with the heavy rains, her gift was working very faintly, and would keep on doing so until she'd traveled some more.

Instead of showing her surprise, she tilted her chin up, turning slowly, knowing full well what effect her figure might have on a man. On most men.

"Slightly. It is that kind of a night."

"Indeed," yes, there was that warmth in the voice, and also more mirth than she expected. "A few minutes, and the fire will get going properly."

Oh. That was why. "Thank you, that would be lovely."

"My pleasure."

The light from the incipient fire softly illuminated his features as she moved to stand closer and tried to focus on enough of the _other_ light, to learn about him. If it was safe to stay here with him, at the very least. He was a handsome man. Pale and slim, but his motions were quick and certain. Adept at the simple task that not everybody could manage as swiftly as he had. When he straightened and moved to make place for her in front of the fireplace, the bunching of his muscles under the tunic matched with the healthy glow to suggest strength and speed.

Strength and speed and determination, that was her reading. And all of that coming from a core of something deep inside that she couldn't read clearly at all, not with as drained out as she was. But she couldn't detect any _bad_ intentions - no intentions that she couldn't deflect or, at worst, render harmless.

"You're staring."

"Am I?" Noor had learned a long time ago to not apologize for seeing the kinds of glow not many others could; she wasn't going to do it now, either.

The pale face canted to the left, then one corner of his mouth tugged up. "You are of the gifted."

"I am," she nodded. "Is that a problem?"

The laughter which answered her wasn't forced, but there was a hollow sound to it to her inner ear. She couldn't _see_ the reason for that - but her scrutiny showed her just how much more he had become interested in her already. "With such lovely company? Not remotely." His tenor was far too clear for purring, but it was sweet and low nonetheless. Or it felt that way to her, making her smile, shift her chin over one shoulder looking at him.

"So... tell me more about yourself - since you have gleaned what _I_ do." It wasn't quite a come-on - two people sharing a wayside shelter hut would last the storm in conversations such as these, but she was far too aware of her own appearance and his interest for anything she said right now to be completely innocent.

It turned into a nice play of words that he was relaxing into, moving closer by fractions, and she was enjoying herself in. The initiative shifted ever so slowly, from her holding the ball and giving him chances to pass it back to his gently peeling off layers of self-confidence based on her abilities and her appearance, to the sensitive inside. And he was oh, so careful with that. Gentle, gentlemanly.

From the idea to draw him in, driven by desire, it was her who was breathing quickly, shallowly, ready to give more than he was asking for explicitly, to offer herself to him, knowing that he wouldn't hurt whatever he touched.

... and then he leaned closer, her lips parting to meet his, when he reached down, fingers closing around her hand to bring it up so the kiss was pressed against the back of her hand. "The storm is over. It has been my pleasure, wiling it away with you. I hope our paths cross again, one day."

"So do I, Carl," she breathed at his back, and reached to touch with just a fingertip the back of his blond hair as he was stepping away, out.

As soon as the door closed, the warm buzz which had filled the air of the shelter seemed to reach its own kind of crescendo and then shatter, delicate shards tinkling in the air around her, some of the lodging deep into her heart.

He could have had her. More deeply and mindlessly and without consideration of consequences than she had ever given herself. Instead, he gave her the gift of letting her collect herself and be who she needed to be.

If anyone had asked Noor yesterday how long it took to gain her trust, she would have answered, _years_. Tonight, she found out that two hours were sufficient.

***

Baran didn't realize he'd gone further than he, or Greta, intended, until he started to notice signs left for another meet. Usually, gatherings more frequent than a couple months apart didn't happen in the same area, and it had been half that time since he big one.

The meets that Greta was at were always big ones.

So if there were signs left by the local gifted for a meet, this would be too far from where he had started for most of them. They were usually a traveling folk, going where there was need - and moving to find more boundaries that hadn't been crossed - but most of them did prefer certain areas. Woods, fields, mountains. The seashore. And some did choose to live in one place and travel out from there when they needed to. All in all, only a few truly strayed throughout the land - so different, far-away places would hold meets independently.

Baran hesitated briefly, wondering whether he should stay and attend the Meet, or if he should turn back. But there had been a reason for Greta to send him out, and that had been to learn on his own. To learn how to learn on his own, because that was what the whole life of the Gifted was. Learning, and then applying that knowledge, and learning from the application, too. But nobody, not even Greta, could live long enough to learn everything.

So they shared.

And maybe he would be able to teach something to the meet, too. The possibility for that wasn't great, he knew that, but still, he had learned under the Eldest, and he at least knew the Elders, who had come to ask her for advice at some time or another. And, if not, he would sit by the fire and listen.

He arrived early; there were only three people, one of them building up the fire. One of the women looked up as he stepped into the designated cave and arched a dark eyebrow at him. "Aren't you a little young?"

Baran could feel his cheek turn to fire. "Aren't there here such as me, who learn from the older gifted...?"

"You arrive alone."

"Leave him be, Thana. You can see he is one of us and has walked far." The other woman smiled at him. "Welcome, traveler. Thana here is not always comfortable with new people, and it shows as doubt."

"I understand," he managed a smile. "My name is Baran. I am apprentice... well. Journeyman, now, I suppose. To--"

"Eldest Greta," a low voice rumbled behind him, and Baran stepped away from the entrance to let the small group in. He saw the man who had spoken, and lowered his hand in greeting. "Hello, Baran. Long road."

"Elder Blaw. I did not know this was your home area."

The short man chuckled. "It's one of my meets, yes. Settle down, settle down, we'll start when we have a dozen, any tardier will show up whenever they do."

And begin they did.

Even though Blaw was probably the seniormost, he did not preside over the meet. The gifted here seemed to mostly know each other, and the routine of the circle was well-established. Only a couple of times was it his turn to speak that Thana preempted it from him. Which he would have let go, he _was_ content to sit and listen - but then the other woman who had been among the first made it up by explaining to him some of the herbs and places that were typical for their area alone. When they were done, he would have to stay and find a way to thank her.

But that was for the morning.

Tonight, he sank into the familiarity of a Meet. Different from the ones he had been to it was; and yet, it wasn't. Not in the way everyone's brightness combined and changed, shared among them into a graceful whirlpool of colors as the words went around the circle. Not in the way they all relaxed, easier in the sharing of the gift and burden that they had.

They were different, but they were also alike.

And it was right.

***

Restar swore again, his first slamming into the bark of the tree in front of him. The pain in his knuckles was sharp and bloody, but it didn't help. He could barely see the outline of what ailed the old oak, and definitely couldn't see the reason for it, let alone heal it.

It was always the same. Always. He had the Gift, he knew that and those others who had it knew it of him, too. But he didn't have _enough_. Sure, he could do some things... but they weren't many, and when it mattered...

He leaned his head against the bark of the oak, wrapping his arms as far around the trunk as he could. Which wasn't far.

He'd heard about this tree. He hadn't sought it out before, and he certainly hadn't announced his presence in the proximity. Everyone in the area knew about this tree. Everyone could see it was frail. Failing. Maybe it was age, and maybe it was something else. It lived on, on the gifts such as him gave it, some giving it a month or two at a time, others only a few days.

And he couldn't even give it that much.

He didn't regret coming here quietly and on his own. It felt like cheating, but he had seen the looks when he was weak, and he was tired. He only wanted to help. To heal. To help grow. What he gave... was disappointment.

Most people didn't know it had been his sister who had been the greatest failure of the Gifted that everyone spoke about. The greatest in living memory, at least. The baby lost in the storm. The couple who disappeared in grief over their child who hadn't gotten to live at all.

Few people knew that she had disappeared, too. It had been years, now, and Restar had searched, but the shame and guilt had taken her away from him. He understood. They shared the same failing, did they not? Not strong enough. Not good enough.

And he had no way to fix that. He couldn't not _see_ the brightness, not really. Even if he spent most of his days at home, crossing the threshold - and everyone eventually had to - would brighten things again. But it wasn't enough. Never enough to do any good.

His palm rested on the old bark, anyway, and he spent as much as he could to strengthen the glow underneath it. He couldn't take away what would eventually dim it, but he could delay it _some_ , couldn't he?

And he walked away in the night. Heart heavy and mind as helpless as before.

Had she passed through here, he wondered. Was she even alive, anymore, or had she thrown herself from the cliffs over the sea, and would his fate differ from that, in the end?

He didn't know. And that helped nothing at all.

***

Baran hadn't seen the great mountains that separated the land they inhabited from whatever lay beyond them. There was a lower, scraggier range that crossed what some people called their _peninsula_ along the middle - but these mountains were something else. They've lived here for many, many generations - but there were no known passes. Sometimes, people had braved the seep cliffs, with as much equipment as they could gather, and some of them hadn't been found. Once or twice that he knew about, strangers had appeared who claimed to come from beyond the mountains, but they had been in such terrible shape when recovered that, while their narratives had been recorded, nobody was sure they could be believed. And none of them could remember _how_ exactly they crossed the mountain range.

He felt the ground starting to slope up for a while before he walked out of the woods; since he had been told, the night before, that he might reach the mountains today, Baran turned his steps somewhat sideways to the slope when the tendency became very pronounced. He wanted to go into the mountains, even despite the snow that slowed his feet, because finding new places had sharpened his curiosity.

And then he stepped out of the shadow of the elms and there they were. The great mountains. The ones that people hadn't truly conquered, and maybe never would. Not that they would stop trying.

The sight was breath-taking. They were majestic, and a little bit frightening. He could see why people didn't truly give up on them. It was like the ocean. A force of nature that was too great to comprehend, and therefore all the more challenging to try and top. Or at least go through.

There was so much strength in the mountain. He could see some of the peaks outlined in a glow that nearly challenged sunlight, even at this distance. For a moment, he wondered if any of the gifted had aided those who had tried to pass across, then he shook his head. None had returned to tell the tale, and there weren't nearly as many of them as to waste on an effort that was, by all indications, doomed.

People lived in the mountain, though, this much he knew. There was a road which should be to the northeast, and he didn't need to take his bearings from the sun to know which way that would be. He could 'see' the faint traces of passage etched into the colorful overlay of the ground. For a moment he wondered if that was because he'd come so far, through so many different places, or because there weren't as many people who traveled these ways and so their tracks were more visible. The answer didn't matter, though. He followed the flow until he found sure footing on the cleared road.

The way was steep, and, with track separating left and right ever so often, eventually lead to a house the like of which he hadn't seen, before. It was perched on the edge of a cliff, with only the road as a possible passage. The cliff was too high to climb, and any approach from the woods around the road seemed stopped by a fence taller than Baran was.

A _new_ fence. With a sturdy gate which now stood ajar.

The house itself - he had caught sight of it as the road wound up around the cliff - was large and gray, the thick dark beams visible amongst the plaster. The roof was sharply sloped, and still laden with snow, the way that the forest about him was high with it. It was a living forest, the winter dimming, but far from extinguishing, the lights of life within it. The house... the house, he could _see_ differently. It had taken root in the rock beneath it, and there was a... a defying cast to the outlines that met his enhanced sight.

He used the knocker on the gate. Barging in would have been impolite, and there was at least one person - one woman - in the yard.

"Greetings, traveler," she said as she stood outlined by the gate a few moments later. Then her eyebrows rose. "You are rather young to be wandering on your own, aren't you?" Another pause, but before he could reply because he was sorting through what he was seeing, "... and gifted. Come on in. There's tea on the fireplace, I'll be coming right up."

She waved him towards the house. "I'm..."

"Go on in out of the cold, we can do the introductions when I get there. Shoo."

The laughter in her tone was not false, as far as he could see and hear, but there was something... it wasn't a light tone at all. A brittleness permeated her, to a point where she was using it as a strength, a reliable part of her. It must have been there for years, to go with the dark knot about her heart. It wasn't an unhealthy knot, she was in good health, other than some of the women stuff which Greta had told him she would explain when he was older. Well, he could _see_ it, at any rate, but he didn't know enough to try fixing it, because he didn't know how 'healthy' would look.

Her tea was good, though. She was alone in the big house, but there was enough touch around the place so he knew she probably lived with her husband. Who had been away for days, at least. He was sipping from a cup he had found, clean and orderly, in a cupboard, when she returned.

"Hello again. Welcome to our home." He could feel his brows drawing down a little bit at something which was off in the way she said _home_ ; he had never heard anyone use it as... as possessively in his life. "My name is Lina, Lina Eswod, and my husband Carl and I have been living here over the last two years."

"My thanks for the hospitality, Lina. I am Baran, as you already guessed, of the gifted. Well, journeyman, and only been this for a short while, but..." He shrugged, and she smiled. And it didn't light up her eyes... and it didn't look like asking about that would be welcome. So he asked something else instead. "If you've been here a couple of years, the fence was your doing, right? Are there any dangerous animals that need so much warding against?"

"Well, no, but it is a good idea all the same. Perhaps some day the residents of this place will need to defend it, and then a fence will make a difference, won't it?"

"It's a pretty definite separation of your yard from the woods around it."

"You felt that, didn't you." This slier smile did touch her eyes. It startled Baran.

"You know about that?"

"Well. Once upon a time a suffered because one of you was supposed to help me but didn't have enough of whatever you need to make it happen. It'd be a good idea to make sure anyone who needs the power has it accessible, wouldn't it?"

"... I think we are making full use of what we have."

"But what if that isn't really enough?" The brightness inside her quickened and her eyes lit up as she explained. "What if, should you have more to go among you, more lives can be saved? What if you can make things unimaginably better, with more of the light brightening every one of you?"

"I..." He frowned. "That would mean more boundaries to cross, though, wouldn't it? And we don't even know how long it takes for one to become active again."

"It would mean artificial boundaries, yes. Man-made, man-enforced. Ones where the difference would be maintained, so that the crossing of them wouldn't breach the boundary much, and it would be very quick to recover." Lina was working now, preparing a meal, and gesturing while explaining to him her vision of a land with more power.

He sat, watching her with widening eyes as the import of what she was saying was sinking in. "It... it would turn people against people, though, wouldn't it."

"Why would it? Before we came here, this is how people lived for a very, very long time."

"And it caused the disaster which sent us here!"

"But we have something they didn't have! We have you, the gifted, the ones who can see and heal what is wrong."

"It won't make up for the damage of turning people against people..."

"I'm sorry, Baran." Lina's voice softened. "I have upset you. Put it away from your mind, if it worries you. We are just two people, we can't change everything."

And as he lied in the bed she had turned for him, that night, and tried to sleep, he wondered why she hadn't believed those words of her own, so very much.

***

Bishawe received the news of an emergency in one of the communities when she was hours away from there, and it first took the shape of a slight change in the way the fields around her looked. It wasn't a sudden enough difference to form a boundary for her to cross, but with decades of experience, she saw it anyway. Too far, she knew, but somewhere in the direction she was moving, there was sickness. And it was probably carried by the water, if the ground this far was changed.

She hurried, cutting across to the nearest road, and sure enough, the first person she saw there warned her that people were being turned about ahead. After polite thanks, she went on, anyway, until she ran into the barring of the road. The people manning it were a safe distance behind it, and for a good reason - she could see they were already sick.

"Ma'am. We'll ask you to turn about and return to where it started from. There is bad danger this way," the woman pointed back.

Bishawe shook her head. "I can see that. I am of the gifted. What is being done about it?"

The man and woman exchanged a look. "Eldest Greta is minding the ones who are worst off. She says she is making progress in purifying the water sources, but she still won't let us drink other than from the vessels that have been attended specifically."

"I'm sure... I think she could use the help, if you would be willing as to help us..."

Bishawe nodded, stepping around the makeshift barrier. "Of course. Can you tell me what the course of the sickness is?"

They looked at each other again, then started piecing information for her. After a few sentences, she could feel blood drain from her face and she sighed inwardly, grimly approving of her own decision not to push the sickness away from the people she was talking with. There were a lot of people ahead of her, and most of them were sick or dying. She knew situations like this; she knew she would be wandering, sleepless, as far from the sick as she dared to find a shred of a boundary that neither of them had crossed, and it was going to be ugly.

But she was seeing deeply and clearly now, and the difference what her gift now could make could still save lives. She couldn't turn away.

The familiar white-haired head looked up as she turned around the corner of a barn, and Greta greeted her with a tired, pale smile. "Bishawe. Thank you for coming."

"The land..."

"How far is it?"

"A couple of hours fast walk away from the road block."

Greta's head lowered. "That's not good."

"No. What have you..."

"I've been splitting what I have between cleaning the water and the sick who aren't beyond my help yet. Boiling water until it looks right." Ah, that would have saved _some_ up for less mundanely handled tasks. "I've been experimenting with herbal extracts to amend the damage, but no luck so far."

"Greta..."

"I know. But I can't leave them."

"No, I suppose not."

"The least sick are there on the roads. Not keeping them where they would get further infected from each other was the best I could do for them, that, and provide them clean water. It will only work for so long, but maybe now with you here, we can find out something before it's irreversible."

"Show me."

After a long time when they'd worked, mostly separate but occasionally together, they didn't need many words. Bishawe could see the beginning of the sickness in Greta, and if there was point of irreversibility, at her age...

Her mind recoiled from the possibility of the Eldest passing.

So instead, she pretended it wasn't happening. Best not to panic anyone. And it felt so wasteful, to worry in those days. here was much to do, and Greta was just as stubborn as she remembered. After she calmed down from their low-voiced arguments about what to do next, she cried, quietly, into the yet another clay pot of water to try and glean the fault of.

She did wander further than she expected she would, anyway. One of the advantages to there being two of them, she could take a few hours late at night, after Greta had caught some sleep, to go far enough to safely leave a message.

Infection. Sickness.

The Eldest in danger.

Maybe if more of them dared, they'd save more people. They'd save her.

Days passing and people drying didn't help much.

It turned out that Greta had been right. It _was_ a dead animal stuck rotting somewhere upstream in a pool of mineral water. When the found it, the resolution was easier to find.

It was too late for too many.

***

Baran learned the hushed talk about the danger to Greta two days after he came back down from the mountain.

He wasn't told directly, no, even though he had, as was done, informed people that he was gifted. It was a rumor that he had heard murmured about as somebody's daughter returned from a trade travel, and she was being asked about news from the world.

She wouldn't even pay attention to him trying to ask her about the location where she heard the news; he was a child, or barely past, and even his most charming smile (he tried) couldn't draw her away from the descriptions of rabbits and fowl exchanged at the marketplace of an area by the seashore. But the news about Greta had involved a whole community quarantined, and that wouldn't be a place for such a market, would it?

It wasn't better as he went after the trail of rumors and speak-say. Nobody would just understand the urgency of his seeking out where Greta was. She was his mentor, and he'd intended to return to her and seek advice about what Lina had talked about. But now, oh, now...

The closer he got, and the more people believed in the reality of it, the more some actually knew to worry. Greta was never ill. That was where she spent so much of her gifts, keeping herself healthy and alive. If this was true, then they would possibly lose the one who knew the most, even if not all.

And he would lose a friend.

Tears, he found as people asked him to help on the way, didn't disrupt seeing right with the gift he had. Because tears would come every time he had to delay his journey east, and that happened a lot. As he looked back, he thought he could have passed most of that distance in under two days. It took him four times as long, and the thought that he might be too late hurt. So, so very badly.

***

"Vera?" By the time Jehan stepped inside the kitchen, their four-years-old daughter was already clinging to his leg and he had picked up her younger brother on his shoulders. It made Vera smile as she looked up from breastfeeding their youngest. She was only a couple of days old and keeping them both awake since then. Vera could understand why he'd wandered out as soon as the morning chores were done, though she had still sighed wistfully. It would be almost summer before she would be able to do anything of the sort. "I have good news," he went on, and that helped focus away from the known pains that were coming.

"Yes?"

"Steph and Pietro down the hill said we could tend the cotton field to the west of the brook!"

"They... are they sure? Don't they need it for--"

Jehan was shaking his head." After their daughter married, they seem to have trouble working it fully, and they thought we could use the extra fabric or goods."

"Oh, that is _wonderful_!" Now she could feel her face lighting up, too, and she looked down at the baby in her arms. "Hear that, Louise? Our neighbors are the best there are, they care for you and us. So when you grow up, you will know to care of them, too."

Jehan was laughing, spinning around with Lou's sister in his arms, Bo still on his shoulders. Then one of the icicles crashed from the roof to the walkway in front of the house, and all of them - well, save baby Lou - stopped for a moment, startled by the noise.

But then they all burst into another fit of laughter, filled with joy and amusement.

All was right in the world. Their world.

***

He wasn't late, but nearly so.

The last hours of his journey were horrifying. He could see the scarring of the place, and his vividified senses chafed against the pain. The pain in the land, in the plants, in the animals. In the people, those who survived and were recovering.

The losses had been heavy. Not nearly as heavy as if Greta hadn't been here, Baran could see her touch in many of the locals moving about, slow, skinny, with eyes heavy, but alive. She had given so much of herself away. (What if he had been with her? Maybe he would have made a difference...)

Maybe he would make a difference now. He was ready to give all that he'd collected since he last had to use anything - two days ago - to save her life. It would still be less than all that she'd given him. Knowledge, ways with his gift. Stories. Wisdom, he hoped.

Young as he was, he hadn't failed anyone who had asked him for help.

Not failing Greta would be even better.

But when he was let into the room, small and warm but with the window open to let in the first smells of spring, the spring she had allowed the people of this place to see, he knew that not even he could push the sickness away. Even with the constant efforts she had made to keep her body working properly, she was decades older than the second oldest living person. Her body was worn out, and when that had combined with the sickness and how drained she had allowed herself to get over the work here...

His tears started away.

He must have sniffled, because her eyes fluttered open. A moment, and her head turned frailly on her scrawny neck. "Baran..."

"Eldest?" He was by her bed in two steps, kneeling before her and grasping her hand in both of his. "I can..."

"Save your strength, little star..."

"I'll get it back, later." It would make breathing less painful. Her mind clearer. So he didn't listen.

"Ah, silly, loving boy." Her lips curled up in a smile which he could almost believe. A smile for his sake. "How have you fared?"

"Everybody thinks I'm too young, apparently."

"No, they won't look around that. You can learn a lot if you keep your ears open."

"I... I have."

"What you learned troubles you, little star?"

"Yeah." 

"Tell me."

"Are you..."

"If you don't now, you may not get a chance. Spill your soul."

She was half serious and half teasing; but when he did tell her about the conversations he'd had with Lina, her brows drew lower. "It is not a good time that I am going."

"There wouldn't have been a good time, Eldest."

"Maybe not. And maybe my going means that it _is_ time for things to change, but..."

"But people will turn against each other."

"Yes. You see."

"I don't see it all, but I see... some." He'd been too focused on finding her to think his way through the consequences of what the Eswods were trying to do. But some of them had occurred to him, anyway.

"You'll..." she was backsliding again into semi-consciousness, her speech was interrupted by a cough. And he had little more left that he could give; he did, anyway. She squeezed his hand. It felt like claws sinking into his skin, she had grown so thin. _Waiting for me..._ She coughed again, easier, but her tongue was too-red when she licked her lips. Fresh blood red. "You'll have to stop it, my little star. You'll have to shine for me. Shine for people to follow..."

Her voice went quieter with each word, until she was moving her lips almost silently. Eyes closed, labored breaths. For a wide-eyed moment he wondered if he shouldn't call somebody else, could she really not be helped?

And the clutch on his hand loosened. The breaths stopped.

"No... Greta? Eldest? _Greta_? **_NO!_** "

***

It took Rhinna seeing exactly two of the gifted with red-rimmed eyes before she asked; the news, however, more than was reason enough for that.

She wasn't one of them, but some knew her well enough. She was as knowledgeable with herbs and other treatments as any three of them put together. It stood to reason, since she didn't have the extra senses to rely on. She only had knowledge and skill, and she was one of the best with those.

One of the best knowing the lore.

Herbs and treatments, stories and songs. She was one of the few who would sing in shared ventures, and she never stopped traveling and collecting more. Knowledge. It was a simple gift she had, a good memory, and it wasn't like the gift of those who could see and do more than common folk, but it was her own.

And today, she learned that a very long story was over.

She sat for a long time after the gifted one who had finally told her what he knew about the passing of the Eldest left her, and even though she'd only met Greta once, and only briefly, the sadness washed through her. There were memories, narratives, from so many people over so long... young, old. People who she had helped and people who she had refused. All the stories.

And now it was up to her to tell the whole story.

She hoped some would learn from it, some day. She just wasn't sure what the lesson would be.

***

Baran shook his head, looking incredulous at his oldest brother (while the other two, still older than Baran himself, snickered to the side), then just. Turned around and stomped away. When the three of them burst into laughter, he stopped stomping and quietly turned, climbing the stairs up to the attic as silently as he could.

At least it was _quiet_ up here, and he could hear himself think. And nobody would mock him for his eyes being red or anything. He'd possibly made a mistake coming here, but he couldn't think of another place to go, and being on the road right now... he didn't know how to talk with people. He was sixteen, an easy seven or eight years younger than anyone else without a mentor. That was half of his life again. Definitely much longer than he'd known he had the gift or been able to use it. That made a difference, and everybody looked down on him.

One day, he would need to go back to Greta's home. He'd see if anyone had been through the place, and if so, what could still be salvaged to study from. And if not... well, just to learn from her notes and collections and the aura of _her_ which she knew permeated the small house.

But he couldn't, not yet. They'd laughed together, there. She'd taught him, she'd talked with him. Pushed him and challenged him harder than anything his parents or his older brothers could imagine and yet it never had seemed like a burden, like something he wanted to run away from. But now she was gone, and the feel of her, the light of her, would slowly dissipate from that place, a little bit with every time somebody stepped over the threshold, and he would lose her forever.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. She'd saved people, so many people over so much. Why couldn't somebody have saved _her_?

And here... maybe it really _was_ a mistake to come back home. there wasn't enough demonstration in the world to persuade his brothers that he really was gifted, and even if there was, he shouldn't be using it for something as trivial. Then there were his parents. Who wanted the best for him, but... the farm needed work, and they were always busy, always hurried. They were doing it for him, well, for them, their four sons. And they had been relieved when he'd left, because that meant they wouldn't have to provide for four sons, only three, but what did his coming back mean? Had he been rejected from the training they'd all been so excited about?

He couldn't talk with them anymore. He must have been able to, sometime in the past, because he couldn't remember fighting them or anything. But he couldn't now.

All alone in the dusty attic, he wondered if there was anyone he _could _talk with anymore.__

***

Shako measured the door again against the cupboard again, smiling to himself. Then he returned to his worktable, laying the piece against the surface so it was clear of the drawings.

By the time his daughter peeked in from the door to the kitchen, he was humming.

"It's going well?"

"Ye-es." She was smiling when he looked up at her, and the sight warmed his heart even more. "It will be a good work."

"Oh, father," she laughed quietly, coming over to give him a hug. She was still tiny, compared to his own bulk, but she was growing. "All your work is good, haven't you noticed? But," her eyes squinted at the drawings, then at the construction already in place. "This one will be beautiful, too."

"You like it?"

"I do. I think the miller's daughter will be very happy with it, too."

"I hope so." His fingers ran over a detail on the side of the door. "If she isn't..."

"Oh, father." She bounced out of his way, but her look on him was warm; she probably had recognized the frown on his forehead. "Who ever was dissatisfied with your work? Stop worrying. I am fine, we are doing well. You _are_ a good provider, and I _am_ happy with you. I have enough friends that I'm not growing up without women to guide me. I'm glad I'm here with you." Her small, dark face was turned up to him, earnestly. "I wouldn't change how things are for ... for anything that I know of. Promise."

Shako sighed, smiling despite himself. "If you're sure..."

"Very sure."

"When did you get so good at knowing what I need to hear?"

"Oh, I think some are calling that growing up." This time, the mirth was in her voice and in her eyes. "I think I'm getting good at that."

"My heart, you've always been good at the growing up thing. Even when you were doing it upright under the table."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Your tables can be pretty tall!"

"Not when you bump your forehead against them, no."

Laughter. "We'll have lunch soon, father. Finish your current work and come inside while the bread is fresh."

And she disappeared into the kitchen. His eyes were stinging, and he was careful not to rub at them with his hand covered in wood dust.

***

Spring had come, but the breeze off the near ocean still meant that Sela was sitting with a shawl in the evening. Shawl and a book in her chair in front of the stove. Some nights, this was enough.

The knock on the door was unexpected, but since it could be somebody in need of shelter, she sighed and trudged to answer it. There was nobody else, and she doubted there would ever be, but it was better that way.

The woman she opened the door _to_... well. She was something else.

Sela just stood there for a long moment, staring at the glittering, slinky vision that was in front of her. Some of the fabrics and stones she knew. Others, including some of the furs, she had no idea about.

Eventually, her eyes found their way up to the woman's face. Which in that exact moment turned into a radiant smile. "Good evening! Are you the lady of the house?"

"'tis my house, aye." It wasn't the way she usually talked, but the exquisite manner of the uninvited visitor made her want to be as contrary and backwards as she could.

"And do you like what you're seeing?" The visitor looked unfazed. "Many do, and I'm coming from the community cluster two hours' ride back that way," she indicated the direction away from the shore, including her handsome, delicate-looking carriage. Which explained why her finery was not covered by road dirt. "All of the women and many of the men were interested how to get this kind of beauty, for themselves or for loved ones. But there aren't many people here who can afford them - maybe because you share your land and don't bother with accumulating--"

"Woman, whatever you want of me, I ain't giving it to you. We live the way we do because that's the way we like it, and we ain't changing just for some shiny silk or rubies. There's people digging up rubies and emeralds, there's people spinning silk, and there's people hunting whatever the striped animal is that you're wearing the coat of. They do they labor honest like the rest of us. And when it costs much, iffen we want them things, we pay for them, however long it takes. Them's the works. Go your own way with your fluffy footed horses and don't you bother me no more. I ain't looking for land or riches, and that's that."

"But... why do you have to be like this..."

"Don't you pout at me, pretty face. Them women you talked with, they care about what people think on 'em, and they'd still talk before they do anything like what you're hinting at. Precious things are precious because they're worth much. You make everybody want them and think they can have them, you stirring trouble, girl. On your way."

And she slammed the door.

Maybe she should have listened more, found out who'd said they wanted this kind of clothing, of jewelry.

But she wasn't in the mood. People always thought they could and should change things. Individual people. People in general, luckily, seldom did.

***

In the end, Baran only stayed with his family for two weeks or so. Frustrating as the time was, it did help him settle somewhat.

The first thing he did when he left was to seek out a meet. What Lina Eswod had told him worried him, and he wanted to know the opinion of the other gifted on it.

To his peace of mind, none of the circle by the fire seemed overly excited by the idea. Even though Greta was gone and he was young, they understood his reasoning. They'd spent their lives helping the people of this land, and the thought of them fighting against each other for a field or an acre of forested land was too sad to seriously contemplate.

Restar ran into the different talk when he was sought out to help with some sick crops in the fields. The people who were tending those crops were quietly questioning the established ways of sharing the land.

It seemed to him that the people in that area had reached the questions on their own, the more he asked about them, the more discontent they got with what there was. And he didn't know how to help with that.

He did help the crops, at least. Traveling without much touch with people for weeks, since he tried to help the oak, really, seemed to have given him enough of the sight to do _this_ simple task.

Being given supplies back in exchange for that seemed to spark a discussion, everybody uncertain who exactly should share what they had with him. Those who muttered that the land should have been partitioned pointed out that if it had been, they would have known. They would know whose crops had been sick and who owed the payment.

Over the next few months, Baran got a chance to find a sort of acceptable place amongst the gifted. Nobody else volunteered to take him on as his mentor, but no circle or traveling others objected to him continuing his journeyman work. Those he worked with grew to appreciate his dedication to what they did; those who didn't still joked around about his age, but accepted that he was growing up to be one of them. They'd still shush him if he tried to argue in meets, but there were few reasons for him to raise his voice that way.

All until the late summer, when he was walking along the edge of the fields that were being reaped and watched two men coming up against each other. They were fighting over a strip of land, and who should take the reaping from it. Who it belonged to.

The argument was hushed by their neighbors, but despite the scorching sun, it sent chills through the young man watching.

Noor wasn't aware that she was looking for the man from the wayside shelter until she settled on a table in a small tavern, and as her food was being brought, a slim woman slipped beside her and, without prompting, started telling her about a man who fit his description being spotted a few miles to the south. Talking to people.

She followed that trail, and finally learned his name. Carl Eswod. And she learned where he lived, since he had left saying that he was returning home, and anyone curious could find him there.

So she did.

Once she knew where to look, she found him rather easily. In some ways, all roads led to his house. All roads to the mountains, at least. And many people sought him out; but her, he asked to stay overnight. So when everybody had left, in the soft, sweet mountain summer night, they talked for hours. And while the subject was power, the principles of it, and what Carl has been trying to do, in the end she found that her head was even more turned, that she was thinking more of _him_ and how to support him than of the bigger issues.

She wasn't sure she saw something wrong with that. Maybe she should have, because it wasn't how things had been _done_ before.

Baran was running exhausted all the time, these days. There were so many people, and such a great share of them were at least considering the idea of dividing the land, partitioning the fields, fencing off their property. No matter how many times he pointed out that they were turning against the neighbors they'd lived close to for a long time, that they'd _worked_ with on this very land for a long time, there were always more.

And even when he was talking, that didn't really have much effect. He was just turning seventeen. Even though he was gifted, people saw him as just a boy-child trying to meddle in grown-up things. So they brushed him off, again, and again.

He didn't give up. But he didn't see himself doing much good, either.

Bishawe sat in a common room, watching the graceful, slim woman woo the crowd with words of riches and comforts which she was also demonstrating clearly. She had a way with words, it looked, but to the gifted it looked like she had a fire burning inside her that she was infecting the audience with.

She waited until most of the locals had dispersed before approaching Lina. There was something she had to point out, as somebody older, who had seen and read much. Power accumulation, by all accounts, led to power abuse.

Lina listened, then it was her turn to question. What if there was a mechanism to oversee the power, to moderate it? A council of the gifted, making sure the power is directed for the good of the people. A council where somebody as experienced as Bishawe herself would be a part of?

Late night chased Bishawe away, on her way. But she did leave wondering - maybe such a thing could be done, and all work out for the best?

Baran thought about it for a long time, but in the end, he couldn't delay any longer. Autumn was coming, and if he waited any longer, people just wouldn't travel to a distant meeting. And he wanted all, or as many as would come, of the gifted to attend. To discuss this thing coming.

The months of traveling had taught him where the messages for the the furthest circles were left; this time, he left there messages for a meet where Greta's meets took place. A great big meet, if he could arrange it.

They would come. He hoped they would.

Lina Eswod reined in the horses of her pretty, mud-spattered carriage, then dismounted, slipping on an apron hanging from a nail on one of the beams of the barn and started taking care of the animals. Only after she had settled them for the night, rubbed, warmed, fed, and watered, did she take off the protective apron and wade through the rain to the house.

Her husband's face, as always, lit up at the sight of her, and he rose to kiss her welcome home. Then walked up the stairs together, to their room, so she could change into warm, dry clothes. Clothes for home.

"You're lucky that there isn't much of anybody here with questions tonight."

She grinned at him. "I'm not even sure luck has much to do with it. I'd blame the rain. And the wind's picking up. Yesterday in the plains it was balmy."

"But winter's coming in the mountains."

"Mm-hmm."

"What next?"

And they discussed that, then. As she dressed. As they came down to the dinner he had prepared. Hiring hands, muscle, to make sure that if anyone disagreed... the work they'd done wouldn't just get swept under the rug.--

To Baran's relief, not much had disappeared from Greta's home. It was still complicated, going through the home, touching the things she had held. Looking into the deeper notes-storage places, into her herbal collection, which had not been minded for over a year. He'd come here, he knew, after this was resolved. And restore things to right. The place was too much of a store for information to be left to fall apart. And he couldn't think of anyone else that could maintain it.

The first one who arrived for the meeting was called Restar. He came in suspicious, and was even more so when he discovered the only person already waiting was a journeyman. He still asked if Baran knew what the gathering was for; the younger man answered as well as he could.

He didn't get to complete the explanation, though, before they found themselves arguing, Restar trying to impose his experience as a reason to be listened to, Baran trying to reason with actual facts.

He didn't think it boded well for the meeting.

Shako watched the door closing in his face in confusion. This had never been a problem, finding a specific type of wood for his work. Not from people he had exchanged with for it before. After a moment, he shook his head and started to another source, an old man who spent most of his days out in the woods, for one reason or another. If he didn't have any, he would know where to get it, wouldn't he?

But after talking with his friend, his confusion was even worse. Apparently, the reason for not finding the type of timber was because somebody up in the mountain, where it was mostly located - where it grew in quantities making processing possible - had fenced up that part of the forest and claiming it for his own.

Why would somebody even do that? Shako didn't understand. But he still started the trek to talk with this Carl Eswod fellow.

Baran listened to the conversation as more of the gifted started arriving. He made sure to stay of Restar's way; it would not do for even more people to first meet him in a fight or a shouting match with his elders.

He stuck to quietly looking around, trying to hear what people really thought. Not in the circles, not in speeches, but among themselves. And what he learned wasn't hopeful. His brothers and sisters of the gift were beginning to feel and enjoy the increased strength that the appearance of artificial, maintained boundaries, even so small as land properties, gave them.

The power, he knew so very well, was exhilarating.

That didn't bode well for what he was trying to do, to get them to stop it from happening. Not if they liked the idea of it...

Sela was walking back from a trade with wool she had spun, at the time when it would be the most sought after, in the fall, when she saw him.

"Limeh. What are you doing?"

"Building a fence."

"... what _for_?"

"Well, this is where your lands end and mine begin, isn't it?"

"It has been the last couple of years. It's been elsewhere before that."

"But it is here _now_. So this land," he pointed behind himself, "is mine, and that is yours. Simple as that!"

Except it wasn't. But he wouldn't listen, and she didn't want to.

In the end, she stomped back home, angry, frustrated. Worried.

She went back in the middle of the night and tore down the fence, anyway. And she fully intended to keep it down as long as she was able to. And any _other_ fences that cropped up around her walking range.

Baran's turn to talk to the gathering came and went, and he didn't like that they laughed at him. They laughed, and grumbled about being called in by a child who clearly didn't know they had more important business. A few of those who had lived and worked closer to Greta stood and talked to support his right to address them, but that only helped so far.

What did help was going back to quietly moving about, cowl over his face and fair hair, and listening. For the first time in weeks, he found that he wasn't alone. Other, older, witches repeated his arguments, even added some of their own. It prickled, some, that they had laughed at him earlier when he had spoken those things out loud, he was glad that he wasn't the only one thinking that.

But the arguments on why such a change would be bad were few and far between, as the evening wore on. Not nearly as frequent or weighted as he'd hoped.

And, slowly, Baran started realizing that change might come anyway, despite better reasoning otherwise. It horrified him.

The meet broke up into smaller clusters not very long after the speakers took their turn. The groups shifted and changed, until people started settling. It was easier to stop seeking when they found people of like mind and arguments weren't getting heated. They didn't really like fighting each other, the gifted.

Noor drifted among the crowd until she heard Carl's name mentioned quietly between a man and an older woman with skin darker than ever her own. She stepped to them, introducing herself, and asked if they had talked with Carl Eswod personally; the rest of the gathering suddenly stopped mattering as the three of them talked, sharing their stories and their thoughts on the proceedings. They were the first to leave the meet, as far as Noor could tell.

Rhianna was bent down over the infected wound, gently applying the poultice against the moans of the woman on the small cot. The husband paled and suddenly found something to do outside. Probably to throw up, if the coughing was indication.

The husband's younger brother stayed. He kept looking at her with that little smile on his face, and since she had a little time before the pus really started coming out, she raised her eyes to meet his. "Yes?"

"Are you worried? You must be worried. You all should be."

"Worried? About what? All us who?"

"All of you who do the healing the old ways. What with the gifted witches getting more powerful now."

"Witches?" She couldn't keep her eyebrow from rising, and she didn't try.

"Well, aren't they?"

"I'm not worried, no. They may have more power to work with, but their numbers will always be limited. There won't be a time when there are more healers than ills. It's how things work. Us... we'll always have a place."

"Hmph."

"But still, I would be curious about what you have heard about that."

"Why would I wanna tell you?"

"Because you already started, you know."

"Hmph."

But tell her he did.

There was only one thing left to him that Baran could think of, to try and stop the land as he knew it breaking down around them all. It wasn't going to be easy, with the first snows falling thick and cold, and he tried to wait it out, but the more he delayed, the worse the talk about property and splitting and settling conflicts got. It had to stop. If nobody else would, _he_ was going to stop it, right?

The gate to the Eswod house yard was closed this way, and he got even colder and more miserable while he waited outside it. It wasn't Lina who answered it this time, either, it was the Carl he had heard about.

He let him in, settled him by the fireplace with more of the tea Baran knew already, and listen to the chattering-teeth youth as he tried to lay his arguments. To the boy's surprise, Carl truly listened, carefully and attentively. The first time anyone had listened to him like that since the spring, since he lost Greta.

But in the end, that made no difference. When he was done and raised his eyes, expectant and shivering, Carl just smiled.

"That is very wise and considerate of you, young man. But I can promise you one thing. Even if people out there listen to you as I have listened, if you persuade anyone... your efforts, no matter how heroic, won't make a whit of difference. What has been started will be finished. And if you try to stand on its way, you'll find yourself crushed underneath it. Is that what you want?"

Baran stared at him, then straightened. "Better to be crushed trying to do what's right than live with the doubt that I might have made a difference."

He took his leave and started the cold dreary road down the mountain. He felt even colder inside.--

Shako did not like Lina Eswod. Sure, the negotiations went well, in the end, but what she was trying to do and how... no. This shouldn't go on. And she wouldn't budge in her determination to see everyone following her lead, her and her husband's.

There weren't many ways that he could think of to make it stop, other than finding like-minded people and removing the Eswods from what could only be their seat of power. High in the mountain. Defensible, from what he'd been hearing on the way. Dangerous.

It wasn't easy, and he had to return home often to make sure his daughter was well provided for, but he couldn't stop, not when he had the idea. Eventually, he gathered a group of like-minded people, restless with the changes that shouldn't have been happening, _wouldn't_ have been happening if those two meddlers hadn't been stirring things up. Eswods.

His baby girl was not happy with him angry all the time, she couldn't understand it. But he had to do it, didn't he? So that the land she grew up to was proper and right, and not split among people who always wanted more than they had. Didn't people who have stuff always want that?

Baran hadn't noticed the people patrolling the outer fence on his way up, but he certainly did see them now. He used the pretext of taking shelter behind the fence before daring the open space of the road again, he tried to talk to them, find out what they were doing and why.

He didn't learn much, but they didn't see him as any sort of danger, so the shortage of information was because there wasn't much, not because they were unwilling to share. For the most part, they were folks restless, not interested in any sort of productive work to trade for food and supplies. The kind that lived in the fringes of most communities, sometimes in houses that they let fall into disrepair or something of the sort. There weren't many in this land, that much Baran had known - most people found their niche of contentment sooner or later - but there were some. And now that defense... that fighting was an option, they'd leaped tot the chance.

But it was the others that worried Baran more. A few thought that what the Eswods were trying to do, it was a change that should be welcomed. That it was progress, moving away from how things had always been and into a better life.

The idea that people truly thought that, that they'd considered the consequences and thought their lives until then backwards and outdated... it upset Baran. Even the one lad - barely two years older than Baran himself - who had joined up because he couldn't stop thinking of Lina and this was the way to see her the most regularly - couldn't make him shake the sinking feeling in his stomach. Something bad was coming. And the hopes that he could avoid it were fading rapidly.

Vera cradled her youngest child in her arms, trying to keep her voice down so as not to wake up or panic any of the three. But she couldn't not try to stop her husband from going away, from joining the men he'd heard were gathering to try and put down the nonsense about land property. The stupid idea had gotten into two of their neighbors and it was irritating, she knew, but fighting couldn't be the answer.

He sighed, kissed her mouth gently. "It'll be all right, love. I'm doing it so that we can get back to peace and raising our babies without anyone trying to encroach us, from any side."

"This isn't like you, Jehan. Please... We should mind our own business, the storm will come and go and we'll be just as always."

He shook his head, kissed her forehead and baby Lou's, and she ducked her head trying to hide her tears. When she turned, the older two were looking up at her, awake, unhappy.

"Mommy, where did daddy go?"

"He'll be back soon, lovey, get you back to bed."

"But why did he go?"

"Because he has to do something."

"He never goes away for the night, though. Why--?"

It was going to be a very long night, and the days ahead wouldn't be better, she realized.--

When Baran learned that people were mobilizing against the Eswod, the worst of his fears were coming into fact.

War.

War was something that their land hadn't seen, not since they landed generations and generations ago in their old, rickety ships, barely persuaded that the land was not shaking any longer. And while neither the Eswods nor those organizing against them had _armies_... this was turning into a war all the same.

He cried as he started on his way towards the location he'd heard of; by the time he reached it, the tears had dried from his eyes and his jaw was set.

But when he reached the place and asked for the men who were doing the organization - Shako, he heard, a large and bulky carpenter - he didn't get much cooperation. He was recognized, people knew him as one of the gifted already, and a woman sharply pointed out to him that them witches were the reason that it all started happening, and they should stay out of it while normal people settled it, once and for all.

There wouldn't be once and for all, though, that much Baran suspected.

And while he stopped pushing before more people got angry... angrier, he did stay close. That was how he spotted another of the gifted, one he knew from the general meeting a few weeks back. Restar. The first one who had arrived, who had argued with him.

Who hadn't announced he was gifted to the people gathered. Instead, he was trying to make them even more eager to jump into a fight as soon as there was one.

Baran was too worried to think it might be anything other than for the worse. So he followed.

It was evening when he followed him, and in the end, he spotted two more of the gifted who seemed to be waiting for him. One of them he knew, she had been there when Greta died. The other one who had kept the community from being completely wiped out. Bishawe. The other was... stunningly beautiful, so much so that his body was stirring in response despite the overbearing worry about the situation. He suppressed that for the sake of listening to what they were going to say, carefully staying away from anyplace they might easily notice him.

They were discussing how they were helping the Eswods. Luring people into being more territorial, needing to defend themselves, into alienating neighbors from each other. And how they were not going to let it get too far, just enough for the ideas to stick. Not into war and destruction.

Baran ducked his face into his hands. Somehow, he doubted they could control any of it at this point. Not keep it from getting worse, at any rate.

The next part was even more interesting, if not more heartening. They were talking about how they were going to control power once the gifted truly had excess of it, rather than just enough to help those who needed it most. They were talking about how _they_ were going to control on, how to seize the initiative.

Then each of them updated the others on who was in agreement with the cause. To Baran's relief, none of the other gifted had agreed to support the fight; there were still too many who supported in principle. Too many, too fast. It was all going away, all.

Shako was going over the supply lists - again - when the slender blond youth slipped inside the room he was making the preparations. The carpenter frowned over, and Baran quickly introduced himself, blurting out what he'd found out. About gifted urging people into a fight, _here_ , among the men Shako was organizing himself.

The carpenter questioned the youth late into the night, and he was still not certain he believed everything. Or even a part of it. But in the end, he said he was going to allow Baran to address the men, see if he could turn the tide some way or another.

He _liked_ the kid, somehow. And, before he shooed him out to get some sleep, he asked if bad came to worse, would Baran be standing with them. Or against them. The clear blue eyes didn't look away, even if the young face twisted. "With you. If there will be gifted among them... I'll do my best to protect anyone against that. Our talents should be used to help people, not harm them."

"Heh."

Support was a good thing, at least.

Baran was much more focused this time around; but then, he had much more as specific examples to demonstrate his points. He began by telling them about his mentor, the eldest of the gifted. The first among them, the oldest and the wisest. Her request for this kind of thing to be stopped. Then he went on to list the ills that had already come to them all because of the divisions. Enmity. Fights between neighbors. People turning on each other, hurting, intending to maybe kill each other. The gathering they were at, that was what they were going to do, too, wasn't it?

The overall results, including the empowering of the gifted - where was it going to lead, too? Did they, people without the gift, truly want to give that much power to others, power over them?

The words were good. Better than the previous time he had addressed a gathering. But the result was about the same. Children couldn't tell them what to do, they were men and women grown and mature and knew what was good for them, good for the land.

Baran was choking by the time he came down from the makeshift dais. Choking on tears, too, not anger.

Shako was waiting, and her reached to rub his shoulder. "Well done, young one. You make a lot of reason, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry, because you are right and some of them can't see it; but I'm even more sorry because I can't step away now."

He had barely finished when another figure had stepped out on the dais. Even slighter than Baran, if not quite as young.

Her name was Rhinna, and Shako at least knew her. She wasn't of the gifted; but she knew much, and she was a storyteller.

He watched as the men and women who had gathered, who had laughed Baran down, listened nearly transfixed as she wound her tales for them. Tales that most of them had heard many a time since childhood, and yet rarely this well.  
She told them the stories from before they all reached this land, the New Land. She told them of wars, and cruelty, and destruction. She reminded them of the journey their ancestors took, the unity that it led to. And she questioned what they were doing. Why they were throwing it all away, reverting to old ways that had brought so much pain.

It did bring the eagerness to fight down a notch. Much as Shako wanted the unity of his men... his anger had burned itself away sometime, and he knew, knew he didn't want people hurt. They were going to get hurt, of course, but... maybe it was all going to end not too badly.

The next day, his anger flared again.

News arrived - by foot, in the form of battered people limping in to join in - that the 'defense' force that the Eswods had put together, that Baran had told him about, had been sent to annex, to appropriate, a strip of land outside the fences that the family had built. Chasing people away from the homes they had been tending, and if anyone resisted, they got beaten up.

The word spread around through his forces like wildfire. All the calm that Rhinna had won over in the group disappeared in a moment; all of _his_ calm vanished.

He asked for a horse; he was still going to try to talk to those people first. Because they had to know, surely, that what they were doing was wrong? Nobody could be that blind, could they?

But Carl and Lina Eswod were like carved from stone, for all the good his words did. And he couldn't reach them, not with their defenders standing guard. Guard! Since when did anyone in their lands need guards!

The fight engaged three days later. That was how long it took for his people to reach the encampment of the Eswod's force in the winter that was turning more and more bitter.

The weren't met with men alone, though. Even Shako could see the three figures standing to the side of the armed men and women. The three that Baran had described to him the first night when they met. And they were not standing idle or hiding from the fight, oh, no. They were making it hell for his men, with intensity that wasn't seen or heard of until then. Snow and wind turned against his force; old wounds and aches flared with the intensity of newly splintering bones, even though the wounds themselves did not happen, nor the fractures.

What Baran saw of that, however, was slightly different.

Restar and Bishawe and Noor were strong, yes, and there were three of them, but they were far from being efficient in the use of their strength. They made mistakes, either from not knowing how to handle the additional power, or from getting in each other's way. Either option... well. He was going to use it.

It wasn't easy. Yielding this much power _wasn't_ the same as using what he'd been used to before. The intensity of the brightness in all, even the individual snowflakes, was distracting.

But the lives of people depended on him. So he broke through that.

He never attacked, not a single time. Instead, he focused on knitting up a shield of forces to protect the advancing men and women. And those who were in pain, he tried to push the aches from. Some, he promised himself, he would see later, when this was over, and mend them better. He could see how now, and he did not understand why and with what heart the other three were inflicting all of that on them.

Maybe he never would.

And then the two forces engaged, and even after having expended so much energy, the horror of watching this with his heightened senses brought him down to his knees in the snow. 

In the end, Shako's force won the day. It was a brutal fight, and the losses were heavy on both sides. Even one life lost would have been too much, Baran thought, trying to look for anyone he could help through tears that were freezing on his cheeks.

Carl and Lina Eswod were apprehended. They submitted to it with their heads held high. And as they turned to look on the baattlefield, Baran shuddered again. They had lost the fight, battle maybe.

But this land where blood wasn't spilled by neighbors now had a tradition of armed conflict. Of property defending. Of power.

They had won the war. And most of the celebrating victors didn't even realize it.

 

The last sight Baran saw before he wrapped his cloak around himself and left, after he had given as much energy he'd had left to those in need of healing and left them to Rhinna's very capable hands, was that of a young woman.

She was walking through the dead bodies that were being lined up for burial, friend and foe alike, calling one name.

"Jehan."

He didn't know whether she would find that Jehan among the fallen. Didn't know how to help her.

So he walked off.

He'd find a place to be alone while he watched things change. A place he would make a home of, and slowly transfer Greta's work into. One day.

Today was for grieving, and he had no heart to do more.


End file.
